Potato chitting

Rumour has it that you can just chuck a potato in the ground, forget about it, then accidentally discover lots more potatoes several months later when you're digging around for some other reason. I've never grown potatoes, and while it seems that it's not quite that easy, it also can't be too hard.....

Yesterday I purchased some seed potatoes from the garden centre (Heather, a second-early good allrounder apparently - not much choice as I left it too late, next year I will get organised and order some interesting varieties from Koanga instead). The ever-reliable Royal Horticultural Society's Vegetables in a Small Garden tells me I should be storing them indoors, exposed to light, with the eyes face up, so that they can sprout, or "chit", before planting them out.

In Auckland you can apparently grow potatoes all year round so I'm not that fussed about when they make it into the ground or when they come out! I've added a reminder to my new Google Calendar widget (you can see that in the right-hand bar of the blog) to check on them for planting out in a month's time.

Rosemary cuttings

Today I took some cuttings in the hope I can grow some fresh rosemary plants to replace the current bush. I'm not sure exactly how big the cuttings should be, and if you do anything other than cut a bit off, stick it in water and wait, but time will tell if this approach works.

The current rosemary bush is approx 3 feet high and 6 feet across so takes up just a bit more of the garden than is strictly necessary. It's quite woody if you try and trim it back and seems to be dying off in a few sections, hence the need to grow some replacements.

Signs of life

The garlic emerged in the last couple of days - so far I can see seven of the eight bulbs have sprouted (a small furry someone has been a-digging near the row and buried the last bulb under a small mound so that one's taking its time). These took a month to pop up, so a bit longer than last year.

Since there's not much happening on the edible front, here's a photo from the non-edible - a bud from the star magnolia's first flowers of the winter season.

Koanga Institute catalogue

Phase two of the planning for spring is now underway - the new seed catalogue from Koanga Institute came out today. After phase two comes phase three - solving the "garden/wishlist=not enough space" equation.

Kings Seeds catalogue

The 2009 catalogue from Kings Seeds is out, and arrived in my mailbox today. Let the planning for spring commence!